The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 3
The librarians and staff of the BBC Written Archive Centre (Rachel Bowles); the Beinecke Library, Yale University (Patricia C. Willis, Nancy Kuhl, Melissa Barton and Diane Ducharme); the Berg Collection, New York Public Library (Francis O. Mattson, Rodney Phillips and Isaac Gewirtz); Bloomsbury Auctions (Dido Arthur); the Bodleian Library (Andrew Honey, Judith Priestman, Colin Harris and Eva Oledzka); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (Friso Lammertse); the Borthwick Institute, York (Philippa Hoskin); Bristol University Library and the Penguin Archive (Hannah Lowery and George Donaldson); the British Library; British Postal Museum & Archive (Barry Attoe); the Brotherton Library, Leeds University (Christopher Sheppard and Stephen Clatworthy); the University of Buffalo Library; Bryn Mawr College Library (Eric Pumroy); Cambridge University Library (Margaret Jones); Cheltenham College archive (Jill Barlow); Christie’s, London (Meg Ford); the Library of Congress; Daley Library, University of Illinois at Chicago; University of Delaware Library (Lora J. Davis); Denison Library, Scripps College (Judy Sahak); the Institute of Education Library, University of London; the James Joyce Library, University College Dublin (Eugene Roche); Eton College Library (Michael Meredith and Rachel Bond); Faber & Faber, especially Robert Brown, Ron Costley, Vic Gray, Matthew Hollis, Paul Keegan, Stephen Page and John Porter; the Firestone Library, Princeton (Margaret M. Sherry, AnnaLee Pauls and Gabriel Swift); the Guildhall Library (Isabelle Chevallot); Hamilton College Library (Christian Goodwillie); the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Cathy Henderson, Richard Workman and Jean Cannon); Haverford College Library; the Hornbake Library, University of Maryland (Beth Alvarez and Ann L. Hudak); the Houghton Library, Harvard University (Leslie A. Morris, Susan Halpert and Betty Falsey); the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow; the Huntington Library, Los Angeles; University of Iowa Special Collections (Stephen Sturgeon); the Archive Centre at King’s College, Cambridge (Patricia McGuire, Peter Monteith and Jacqueline Cox); the Lindley Library of the Royal Horticultural Society, Wisley; London Fire Brigade Museum (Jane Rugg); Magdalene College Library, Cambridge (Jane Hughes); the Mary Institute and St. Louis County Day School archive (Anne McAlpine); the University of Memphis Library (Christopher Ratliff); Merton College Library (Julia Walworth); the Vincent Voice Library, Michigan State University (John D. Shaw); the Missouri History Museum Library (Jason D. Stratman and Dennis Northcott); the Mitchell Library, Glasgow (Susan Taylor); the National Library of Scotland Manuscripts Division (Iain G. Brown); the New York Public Library (Thomas Lannon); Newberry Library, Chicago (Jill Gage); the Oxford English Dictionary (John Simpson and Margot Charlton); the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, University of Pennsylvania; the Pierpont Morgan Library (Clara Drummond); the Regenstein Library, University of Chicago (Julia Gardner and Christine Colburn); St. Louis Public Library (Jean M. Gosebrink); the Signet Club, Harvard (Katharine Urbati); Sotheby’s, London (Philip Errington); University of Sussex Special Collections (Karen Watson); Templeman Library, University of Kent (Jane Gallagher); University College London Library, Special Collections (Laurie McNamee); the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia (Molly Schwartzburg, Margaret D. Hrabe, Regina Rush and Sharon Defibaugh); Washington University in St. Louis, Special Collections (John Hodge and Erin Davis); the Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; the David Wilson Library, University of Leicester (Caroline Sampson); the Worcester Museum of Art; the Working Class Movement Library, Salford (Lynette Cawthra).
The British and American book trade, including Allen and Patricia Ahearn (Quill & Brush); Adam Blakeney (Peter Harrington); Ron Chapman and James Tindley (Tindley & Chapman); Ann Gate (Waterfield’s); Rick Gekoski and Peter Grogan (Gekoski); Ted Hoffman (Bernard Quaritch); Larry Hutchison; Sabrina Izzard (Halls); James Jaffé; Ed Maggs and Joe McCann (Maggs Brothers); Jeanette Murch (Greenwich Book Place); Anthony Payne; Gary Oleson and Francine Ness (Waiting for Godot Books); Mary Phillips (September Books), Anthony Sillem; Veronica Watts; Terry Westcott; Joy Young, and many others who have tracked down and supplied materials or willingly answered queries about books that would otherwise have been inaccessible to us.
Glossary
blind-ruled impressed with rules but without ink
braced with added brackets or square brackets not in themselves intended as punctuation (often for further consideration)
cognate ribbon and carbon copies from the same act of typing and therefore textually identical unless annotated or edited (see reciprocal)
draft preliminary manuscript or typescript
excised leaves leaves removed, for instance from the March Hare Notebook, and not accompanying the original
eye-skip omission caused by eye of copyist or compositor jumping to a later repetition of words (such as “The nymphs are departed”, The Waste Land [III] 175, 179)
indented (of an individual line) set to the right of the left-hand margin of the poem
inset (of a group of lines) set to the right of the left-hand margin of the poem
laid in of extraneous leaves introduced into a manuscript volume such as the March Hare Notebook but not bound as part of it
orphan the first line of a paragraph set as the last line of a page or column
overtyped typed in the same position so as to supersede what originally appeared
part a division of a poem marked by the author with a numeral
quad-ruled printed with vertical and horizontal lines forming rectangles
reciprocal of typescripts in which the two or more pages are a mixture of cognate ribbon copies and carbons, and which together would constitute the complete ribbon copy and the complete carbon
scored marked with a vertical line in the margin
section a division of the text of a book (“The section of ‘Occasional Poems’ was introduced in 1963”)
separately constituting an entire book, pamphlet or broadsheet
stepped arranged on more than one line; unless specified, each step beginning where the previous ends
variant difference in the text; within TSE’s poems, unless otherwise specified, variants are differences from the main text of the present edition (see Textual History)
widow a last word or short last line of a paragraph falling at the top of a page or column
Abbreviations and Symbols
ANQ American Notes and Queries
AraVP Ara Vos Prec (Ovid Press, 1920)
Ariel Faber Ariel Poem pamphlets (standard editions)
Ash-Wed Ash-Wednesday (Faber, 1930)
Beinecke Beinecke Library, Yale University
BL British Library
BN Burnt Norton pamphlet (1941)
Composition FQ Helen Gardner, The Composition of “Four Quartets” (Faber, 1978)
del. delete, deleted
DS The Dry Salvages pamphlet (1941)
EC East Coker pamphlet (1940)
ed. edition, editor, edited (by)
EinC Essays in Criticism
ELH English Literary History
ELN English Language Notes
Fr. French
Ger. German
Houghton Houghton Library, Harvard University
Inf. Inferno (Dante)
King’s Modern Archive Centre, King’s College, Cambridge
L. Latin
LG Little Gidding pamphlet (1942)
Magdalene Library of Magdalene College, Cambridge
March Hare Inventions of the March Hare
MLN Modern Language Notes
MLR Modern Language Review
ms manuscript
N&Q Notes and Queries
NEW New English Weekly
NY New York
NYPL New York Public Library
OED The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed., 1989, with online updates)
Oxf Bk of English Verse The Oxford Book of English Verse ed. A. T. Quiller-Couch (1900)
PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America
Purg. Purgatory (Dante)
repr. reprint,
reprinted
RES Review of English Studies
rev. revised
Sw. Ag. Sweeney Agonistes (Faber, 1932)
Texas Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin
TLS Times Literary Supplement
tr. translation, translated (by)
ts typescript
U. University, University of
VE Valerie Eliot
WLComposite composite text of the drafts of The Waste Land (present edition)
WLFacs The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts including the Annotations of Ezra Pound ed. Valerie Eliot (1971)
Abbreviated titles are detailed in the Index of Identifying Titles for Prose by T. S. Eliot. Abbreviated titles for TSE’s poetic works are detailed in Volume II, within the Textual History headnote, 3. KEY TO EDITIONS.
Abbreviated titles for works by other authors are detailed in the Bibliography.
Quotations from OED retain its abbreviations.
SYMBOLS
| line break, used in quotations from verse
| | stanza break, used in quotations from verse
informal ampersand, used in quotations from manuscript
+ “and in derived text” (of a reading within a poem, or a poem within editions)
¶ new paragraph
> or < line space (used at the foot of a page in the poems)
[ ] enclosing a date not specified by the author or publisher
^ insertion, used to indicate where additional material was to be placed
· · · ellipsis (raised), used to indicate omissions made by the editors of the present edition
… ellipsis (baseline), used in quotation where the ellipsis is present in the original
. . ellipsis in entries quoted from OED
‖ used to separate different readings within textual history collations; see Volume II, Textual History headnote, 2. NOTATION
to indicate a range of instances most of which, but not necessarily all, have a certain feature; see Volume II, Textual History headnote, 2. NOTATION
Collected Poems 1909–1962
(1963)
Prufrock
and Other Observations
1917
For Jean Verdenal, 1889–1915
mort aux Dardanelles
Or puoi la quantitate
comprender dell’amor ch’a te mi scalda,
quando dismento nostra vanitate,
trattando l’ombre come cosa salda.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S’io credessi che mia risposta fosse
a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
questa fiamma staria senza più scosse.
Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo
[5]
non tornò vivo alcun, s’i’ odo il vero,
senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
5
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
10
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
15
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
20
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
<
[Commentary I 374–81 · Textual History II 312-13]
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street
25
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
35
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
40
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’)
45
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all—
50
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
>
[Commentary I 381–83 · Textual History II 313–15]
55
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
60
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
65
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
· · · · ·
70
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
· · · · ·
[Commentary I 384–91 · Textual History II 315–17]
75
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
80
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen th
e moment of my greatness flicker,
85
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
90
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: ‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
95
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.’
And would it have been worth it, after all,
100
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
105
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
‘That is not it at all,
110
That is not what I meant, at all.’
· · · · ·
[Commentary I 391–95 · Textual History II 317–18]